Twelfth Bough

i run my own damn think tank

Archive for category Citizenship

The New Boss

Jul 7

Posted by Marlena in Citizenship, Corruption & Crime, Injustice, Religion | No Comments

There’s an excellent piece here about the way leaders make decisions, decisions which equate their own personal power and influence with the lives and well-being of other people. These decisions often result in many deaths, and they are then promptly covered up leaving the impression that the whole thing was a great shock to everyone concerned.

As Condi Rice once lamely said, lying through her teeth, “I don’t think anybody could have predicted…..”

To make a long story short, what’s needed is for ordinary people to have enough moral courage to blow the whistle on these situations before they get to the decision stage.

One lesson of this book is that you will not reduce those risks adequately by action within the firm or government agency. The organization has to be monitored by other organizations that are not under the same management, that don’t respond to the same boss. You can set up processes within the organization that make truth-telling, realistic assessments, and warnings of danger somewhat more likely. But that isn’t close to being an adequate solution. Subordinates who act like bystanders (to keep their jobs) are indeed part of the problem, as Gerstein argues, but the organization’s leaders themselves are the major part.

Who are these organizations under different management? Who is the boss with the higher authority?

The only one I’m aware of is God himself. When people respond to the higher authority of an altruistic, just and merciful God, they will certainly have the moral courage to do the right thing at great personal cost.

It has happened, it does happen, it needs to happen, and I believe it will happen. The big wheels are turning and gaining momentum. Lies have short legs. The day is coming when they cannot outrun justice any longer, and the world will rejoice.

Brilliant

Jul 3

Posted by Marlena in 9-11, Bush/Cheney, Citizenship | No Comments


Go here and see the others.

What I like best is the snark. I personally think it’s really important at this point to pile on about the RIDICULOUS quality of the official narrative.

Americans like to be cool, but you can’t be cool when you’re a sap. So work on the premise that you have to hit people where it hurts. And since we’re a shallow culture, I think pointing out how believing the government story makes one an idiot is as good a place as any to start.

What are they going to do about it? Fight back with facts? Try and prove us wrong?

Go for it.

The moral depravity of the Iraq war

Jun 30

Posted by Marlena in 9-11, Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Injustice, Iran, Iraq, Military, Psychology, Stupidity | No Comments

Watch this video. About seven or eight minutes in you can see bound detainees being forced off the top of a three story building. It appears that American soldiers are doing this, though you can’t see them clearly from the video. People in military uniforms come and whisk away the detainees after they fall.

It would be nice to think that American soldiers are all wonderful, brave people who would never stoop to such depravity, but that is what we call a “fantasy.” Given the many other sickening things that have broken through the media firewall (soldiers tossing puppies over cliffs, tormenting Iraqi children, testimonies of war crimes at Winter Soldier hearings, Haditha, drop weapons, etc.), it would be totally irresponsible and cowardly for any American to dismiss these actions as impossible. There it is on video. Somebody is doing it. Does that mean that everyone in the military is sick? Of course not. But the military, as an institution, has a civilian leadership; and those people are sick. The fish rots from the head.

Besides that, the fact remains that American soldiers are systematically trained to dehumanize ‘the enemy’ in order to be able to kill them. That is the purpose of having a military, after all. So let us not get all righteous and defensive when something like this comes out. It is time for Americans to get real and face the meat-grinding, dehumanizing machinery of the US military and see what it actually it does to people — our people and other people.

We have a military to kill people so we don’t have to do it ourselves. We subcontract the dirty job to others so we don’t have to carry the psychological burden. It’s just like buying steak all shrink-wrapped — we are preserved from the trauma of killing the cow and carving up its flesh. But somebody does those things, and it’s the same with the military. They are not all over there building schools and hugging babies, you know. Well over a million people have been killed in Iraq. Who is responsible for that? Why, we are. Did our people kill every single one? No, but we started the war, so let’s not get persnickety. The possibility of innocent people dying never did bother us that much.

What happens when you take the military and put it under a mentally deranged civilian leadership? You get utter moral depravity. Institutionalized psychopathy, with weapons. If you don’t like this, then stop glorifying the military and war. But don’t deny it. Don’t deny that we are all responsible for tossing bound detainees off the tops of buildings, murdering for fun, destroying an entire country that had nothing to do with 9/11, causing the untold suffering of millions and millions of people and the gruesome destruction of our own fellow citizens. We own it all because we don’t pay attention, and we are lazy, and we let ourselves be led around like a bunch of stupid idiots. We are so incredibly stupid that we are on the verge of letting this all happen again, to Iran.

I fear we are truly lost and the moral compass has been smashed. An attack on Iran would be as unjust if not more so than what we did to Iraq. It will cause unforgivable destruction, including our own this time. For certain, and here in the ‘homeland.’ It is all lies, just like the last time.

Do you have the nagging doubts? You must listen to them. That is what’s left of your conscience. If you can see the faint thread of truth, you must follow it. Pick up the thread and follow it quickly, as quickly as you can until you find the whole thing. Go now. Go.

Holy crap, another unicorn.

Jun 27

Posted by Marlena in Citizenship, Iran, Iraq, Israel | No Comments

Well, well, well. It appears that a little kerfluffle has broken out among some muckety-mucks over whether certain American Jews in the upper crust may have dual loyalties to Israel, and if so, whether or not these loyalties have anything to do with the shameful, immoral War in Iraq and some other stuff that may or may not happen.

They are flinging food. That’s because this dual loyalty issue goes directly to the heart of the matter. You can read about the history and extent of the situation here. Dual-loyalty is the piece of the puzzle that explains everything. Take a look for yourself and see if you don’t come away thinking, WTF?

Is this anti-semitic? Is it anti-semitic to notice that Israel’s interests are constantly in our faces? Maybe we’re just frikking annoyed. Enough already. Why do Americans have to constantly put Israel’s interests before our own? It’s not right. It’s just not right, and it’s as simple as that. If you are an American, be an American. If you’re an Israeli, be an Israeli. But make a decision and be honest about it. Stop wanting it both ways, because the two things are not the same. As Americans we are under no obligation to adore Israel or any other country for that matter. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t adore Israel. Not even a little teeny tiny bit. Actually, not at all. That is my prerogative, and I do not apologize for it. Why would I?

Much more about this at American Goy, including this:

As you donate money to the Jewish causes - a religious education, a Jewish school, a Jewish charity or… AIPAC… think of the effect.

I want you to be aware and pick your loyalty.

The retard, outgoing American president has said “You are either with us or against us!”.

We, Jews and goyim, have not reached this phase (let us hope we won’t).

We can all work together for the betterment of America and mankind (to me, the order is important).

Am I a bigot?
As an American Jew, with all the dual-loyalty brouhaha that accompanies that fact, are you a traitor?

It is all in the nuances, in my opinion.

Yes. There is not so much high ground here as some people would like to believe. I think that is a very good thing to think about.

Police State 2008?

Jun 24

Posted by Marlena in 9-11, Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Media, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Stupidity | No Comments

You don’t have to take my word for it. I’m nobody.

Paul Craig Roberts, on the other hand, has qualifications.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington, Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice . Click here for Peter Brimelow’s interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

And when you’re done watching that, please read The Coming Catastrophe? by David DeBatto, former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and Iraqi war veteran.

I may be shrill from time to time.

OK OK… I’m shrill every day. But this is why. Should these things come to pass, they won’t be easily undone.

Things to do today

Jun 19

Posted by Marlena in Citizenship, Psychology | No Comments

Go here.

Read.

Look at the pictures.

Click on all the links.

Find yourself on the State of Consciousness chart. Think about the people you interact with every day. Consider where they are on the chart. Consider whether it is better to move up the chart, or down the chart. Consider the many ways one might accomplish moving up or down the chart. Consider who encourages us to move up, and who encourages us to move down. Think about that carefully.

Act accordingly.

Wear Orange

Jun 17

Posted by Marlena in Citizenship, Corruption & Crime, Injustice, Politics | No Comments

There are some really great reads out on the interwebs today. You can browse my top ten picks here, but this one in particular deserves wide circulation.

You know all those nagging cognitive dissonances we live with every single day, like how the system seems to be totally broken and yet we feel compelled to participate so as not to give up ‘hope’? Isn’t that annoying? Don’t you want to have some answers that will let you put down at least one heavy bag so you don’t have to carry around both bags all day, every day, year after year?

If elections really were a solution, then why hasn’t the Democratic majority in Congress, ended the war, the torture, and the massive, warrantless surveillance over all of us and impeached the sorry excuses for human beings in the White House? Pelosi and Reid claim that they haven’t had the votes to stop the war. Nancy and Harry: that’s what your leadership posts are for. You don’t need the votes. All you have to do is block the funding bills from coming out of committee. If you don’t like the telecommunications amnesty bill or the spy-on-all-Americans bills, then all you have to do is keep the bills from coming up for a vote. You can kill these bills in the same way you’ve been killing the impeachment resolutions against Cheney and Bush. But then, Nancy and Harry already know this.

Isn’t that the truth? They have the power to block impeachment, yet they claim they can’t do anything about all these other horrible bills. In layman’s terms, that is what we call having one’s cake and eating it, too.

The Bush regime has been spearheading an extraordinary rupture from the norm, de jure and de facto, much of it in the shadows, but increasingly in the open, and the majority of people of this country are deeply disturbed by it.This is in spite of the fact that only a fraction of the people are aware of the magnitude of this rupture because the mass media and the Democratic Party have been actively minimizing and/or concealing this.

In addition, all too many Americans are “opting out” of taking responsibility for the barbaric acts being committed in our names because they themselves are anesthetized by their material comforts.

The rupture’s dimensions, nonetheless, are so far-reaching that it is impossible for this country’s leadership class to conceal entirely the jagged rips and tears going on.

People know. They know that horrible things are happening, though they don’t have the words to put around them. And they don’t have time to figure it out and sort through all the false leads and conspiracy theories and tsunami of news since they have to work two or three jobs per family to keep the mortgage paid, etc. So they put compartmentalize all this anxiety about politics, and they put it into the election, which conveniently takes just one day of our time in November. There (brushing hands together). We’re all set. Just mark that voting day on the calendar.

It’s deeply immoral for the Democratic Party and the mass media to countenance torture and “pre-emptive” wars based on fraudulent premises. Obama and Pelosi and McCain are fully aware of this. They want us to follow their lead and get us to act as if this isn’t the present reality – that we should ignore their collusion in crimes against humanity and support them as fellow colluders.

That is what these elections are really about: herding people into supporting crimes against humanity and declaring that it’s the people’s will.

Is that what you want? Is that the kind of person you are? Is this the legacy we want for our children and future generations - that we stood by and let tyrants and monsters ravage the planet?

Even if you now think that Obama should be “given some slack” for what he’s saying, do you think it is proper to put your faith in one person and faith in the same party that has betrayed us all? Even if you plan to vote for him, do you think that simply voting discharges your responsibility to protest, everyday from now until it is no longer necessary, the moral outrages being committed by our government?

…Every single person who reads this and who steps forward does so in the name of millions of others and creates the conditions for many, many others to step forward.

Don’t we as individuals have a personal responsibility to take a stand against grave injustice and not pass that responsibility on to others to take care of it for us? The people who many people think are supposed to take care of things are obviously not doing it.

So what are you waiting for? Yes, you.

The Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism

Jun 12

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Surveillance | No Comments

In a recently exchange with someone who vehemently disagreed with me, the person said, “It’s just baffling to me how anyone could misconstrue something like this.” Well, it is equally baffling to me how some people can still fail to suspect our government’s motives. Let us borrow this phrase to describe it: The Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism.

Just in today’s news over at Global Research, you can read two pieces from established scholars that should bring a shadow across even the most trusting brow. My challenge to anyone who persists in believing that our government will not do horrible things to us, the American people, is this: show me what would prevent them? If it’s true that we have been operating under a Continuity of Government (COG) plan since 9/11, then our Constitution has been effectively suspended. Who is then capable of stopping NSPD 51 and the latest, NSPD 59? And even if that isn’t true, what has stopped them from doing anything we don’t like?

(crickets)

The national security crowd considers themselves sophisticated and tough, and they remind us that our government has to do certain dirty things to keep us safe. It’s the ‘real world’, the world Jack Nicholson screamed about when he said, “You can’t handle the truth!!” Some of those things are described here.

But in the next breath they insist that the government would never do anything to hurt us. This is where the Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism kicks in. They admit conspiracies happen and are necessary, but they accuse the conspiracy theorists of being naive for thinking that some of the conspiracies are directed against the American people.

Now a quick observation on the state of the American people should confirm who is truly being naive here. Have our wages increased? No. Has our security increased? No. Do we enjoy greater leisure time and a safe food supply and better jobs? No. No. No. Is it all a coincidence or else the fault of brown people and/or liberals and/or terrorists? No. Those are the scapegoats. The people responsible for these giant problems are the people actually running the government. If things suck on a grand scale, and they do, it’s Washington’s fault. Remember all that talk about the ownership society we heard from the right? How about some ownership that the Bush Regime and it’s congressional enablers and Israeli handlers have run the USA into the ground?

Here is George Bush’s latest disgusting terrorist attack on the American people: NSPD 59. There is nothing here to prevent the executive branch from classifying Americans critical of the government as threats to national security. It is just another nail in the coffin of our Bill of Rights. And if Bush/Cheney/Israel decide to rustle up some new war with Iran, you can be sure that we will find out why Bush passed NSPD 51 and NSPD 59 — so they can come out of the authoritarian closet once and for all.

Our government clearly holds us in utter contempt. It is ultimately naive to refuse to recognize this.

The Devil is in the Details

Jun 5

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Citizenship | 2 Comments

Richard Cook and George W Bush entered the same freshman class at Yale. Bush took one road, and Cook took another. How different would our world be had a man of Cook’s caliber, instead of the insipid twit George W Bush, ascended to the US presidency? I cling to the hope that someday we will live in a world with worthy and honest leaders.

Meanwhile, I think Cook has touched upon an important detail in this recollection of Thomas Jefferson.

Today, back in Williamsburg , I can see even more clearly that Jefferson was one of the great men of history. He wrote in the Declaration of Independence the now-familiar words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty , and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This statement has never been surpassed as a summary of democratic principles or in expressing our God-given right to freedom, whether from governments, tyrants, or the brutal financial oppression we see everywhere in the world today emanating from global finance capitalism.

Ever since he wrote it, Jefferson ’s formulation has resonated with those who love liberty, both for themselves and others, as has the clarity with which the Declaration of Independence expressed the right to choose our own form of government. Later Jefferson wrote, “I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.” He also wrote, “Every generation needs a new revolution.”

I should point out that I never saw Jefferson ’s ideals as promoting “license” vs. “liberty,” or as supporting the idea of viewing any action of government as ipso facto evil. Jefferson favored a limited government elected by “We the People” and served in positions of public responsibility for most of his life. He saw government as a servant of the public, not its master. He saw the human individual as God’s highest creation, not some social, economic, or governmental collective. He also knew that constructive government actions, such as the peaceable acquisition of the Louisiana Territory , promoted freedom, whereas policies based on warfare and violence destroyed it.

To love liberty for yourself and for others — it’s an important detail. It’s the detail that is so easy to overlook but which makes all the difference in the world. Literally.

How do we get out of here?

Jun 3

Posted by Marlena in Citizenship, Media, Psychology | No Comments

Rarely is the question asked, “Is our adults learning?” Sometimes I wonder that. Pretty much every day I wonder that. Occasionally I get a little testy and write things like this.

Today I found a nice post at George Washington’s blog which deals with this very topic, and I hope you will go and read it.

Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that our country is going in the wrong direction. That the Iraq war was a mistake. And polls show that the majority of Americans questions the government’s version of 9/11 and other basic tenets of the “war on terror”.

So why aren’t people doing anything to fix things?

It is largely because people are hopeless . . . they don’t think there is anything they can do to turn things around and improve our situation. Also, many people believe that they should just “lay low” until things get better, and that the only thing that standing up will accomplish is getting whacked in the head.

I think this laying low business is very important. People have a powerful urge for self-preservation, but laying low does not make us safer. We have safety in numbers. I frequently talk to people about what’s going on and probably make a fool of myself because I believe we have safety in numbers. I want people to know that other people are out there questioning what’s happening in our country and in our world. I want people to know they are not alone with their doubts. I want people to have the courage to question what we’re being told. It’s only dangerous if few people do it. The more people who openly question and ask and challenge, the safer we all are. You say you’re a patriot? OK, well, this is what true patriotism is all about. Ask George Washington. Have courage and be stouthearted!

This is the way out: Open your eyes, and open your mouth.